‘Never pain to tell thy love’
By William BlakeNever pain to tell they love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love.
I told her all my heart;
Trembling, cold in ghastly fears -
Ah, she doth depart.
Soon as she was gone from me
A traveller came by
Silently, invisibly -
O, was no deny.

"Once
the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings
infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side
can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which
makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky."
- Rainer Maria Rilke

All who joy would win
Must share it, -
Happiness was born a Twin
- Lord Byron: Don Juan

"Love, you know, seeks to make happy rather than to be happy."
- Ralph Connor

I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. - William Butler Yeats
"Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness."
—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.
- Robert Frost

“It
is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love
those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger
than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own
home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each
other must start.” - Mother Teresa
"And
when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself,
the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy
and one will not be out of the other's sight even for a moment."
- Plato

“This day I will marry my friend, the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love.”
- Author Unknown

“Two persons love in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold.”
- Margaret Fuller

“Even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.”
- Kahlil Gibran

“Love,
I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy
themselves, though it may not impress the neighbours as being very
much.”
- Zola Neale Hurston“You can wish you were in love, but you have to wait until the object of your affection knocks on your door.”
- Angelica Huston

“Love just doesn’t sit there, like a stone, it has to made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin“If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.”
- Katherine Mansfield

“Love is not love until love’s vulnerable.”
- Theodore Roethke

From Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems by Alice Walker I have learned not to worry about love; but to honour its coming with all my heart. To examine the dark mysteries of the blood with headless heed and swirl, to know the rush of feelings swift and flowing as water. The source appears to be some inexhaustible spring within our twin and triple selves: the new face I turn up to you no one else on earth has ever seen.

A SAILORS” VALENTINE The picture on the cardboard box Was colourful with varied shells That blossomed into shapes atop A vase composed of them as well -- And promised that we might combine Those pieces in a Valentine.

The task seemed hopeless for a week, So like in form and hue were they -- Those thousand jigsaw fragments pieced Across the table as we framed The borders with the whole in mind, To build our Sailors’ Valentine.

For so it seemed to us, and still A prudent way to deal with things Appears, that if we only built The outer pieces in a ring About the empty space, we’d find The clue to shape our Valentine.

What lonely seamen, far from home, Collected on each foreign shore Sea shells cast up like shipwrecks thrown Upon the mercies of the Lord, Assembling thus in their free time Such gifts to please their Valentines?

From swaying crow’s nest, staring hard Across the sea’s relentless foam For signs of hope upon the far Horizon—sweethearts, friends and home- A sailor learns to bide his time: For patience molds his Valentine.

Then one by one and two by two, As we relaxed our straining heads, The fractured bits began to fuse, And out of chaos soon was wed Our loves together, in designs That formed a Sailors’ Valentine.

But now this puzzle which has seen Its purpose, and beguiled the hours With light and pleasant industry, Lies disassembled, with its flowers’ Petals to heap resigned: Alas, our shattered Valentine!